Category:IUCN protected area errors

IUCN protected area errors is a category of places erroneously listed by the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) as IUCN protected areas. To be included in this category, a place must appear in WCPA's World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) but appear to have been listed there by error. A place has been erroneously identified to be a protected area if there is verification that there is no natural environmental area at the site. Sites considered to be tentatively verified errors are included in this category as well. These are sites for which there is reasonable expectation that there is no natural area present, and for which sources describing the site do not mention any substantial natural area.

Background: As of April 2008, numerous sites that appear in and related Wikipedia categories appear not to be valid protected areas, in that they are not natural areas or that they are not protected.

This category provides support to WikiProject Protected Areas which relies upon the WDPA as a basic source on which sites to categorize as protected areas, usually by including a Protected areas infobox. When an apparent error about the nature of a site is verified, it seems appropriate to drop the site from a given IUCN Category by dropping its Protected areas infobox and/or otherwise removing it from Category:IUCN Category V or similar Wikipedia category. However, for a site that is listed in WPDA, it remains verifiably, but erroneously, a protected area. This error category is provided to mark such situations, to support corrections in WPDA, external to Wikipedia, and to support data quality in Wikipedia (by helping to prevent erroneous reclassifications back to protected area categories).

WikiProject Protected Areas seeks to work with WCPA to correct the WDPA listings, facilitated by use of this category. Ideally, there should be no members of this category, but currently it is useful to have this category in order to facility Wikipedia data quality improvement. For discussion or to join in this endeavor, please comment in Talk area of WP:PAREAS. See also WikiProject Protected areas/ProtectedAreasUS which may provide additional comments on the nature of errors for U.S. sites.

See also Category:IUCN protected area omissions which covers the reverse situation, for when WDPA fails to lists a site that is a protected natural area.